Thunderwolves Start 2014 with Win

THUNDER BAY – Lakehead University Sports – Jylisa Williams’ first game as a Thunderwolf impressed many at the Thunderdome, as she scored 39 points in her Lakehead debut to lead the ‘Wolves past the Waterloo Warriors, 89-60 on Friday evening.

Waterloo proved to be a tough opponent to begin the game, jumping out to an 8-1 lead early on. Lakehead would rebound quickly to lead by one after 10 minutes, 19-18.

In the second quarter Jylisa Williams (Atlanta, GA) would break out to score 15 in the second quarter alone, leading Lakehead into the locker room with a 42-30 lead at the break. She would add 14 more points in the 3rd quarter, totalling 35 points with 10 minutes left to play. With the game’s winner more or less decided as the 4th quarter began, the question instead became ‘How many will she score?’.

With the game in hand, coach Jon Kreiner wisely pulled Williams with 5 minutes remaining in the game, as she totalled 39 points, 6 rebounds and 5 steals in 24 minutes of play. Remarkably, she scored all of her points from within the 3-point arc, going 14-21 from the field and 11-14 from the free throw line.

Kelsey Bardsley (Manchester, Eng.) was her usual sharp shooting self, dropping 5 three pointers for 15 points to go with 4 rebounds and 2 assists. Ayse Kalkan scored 7 points with 7 rebounds and 3 assists.

For the Warriors, Madison Behr and Kristen Osborne scored 11 points each, with Marti Killeen grabbing a game-high 9 rebounds.

Coach Jon Kreiner said, “It was great to finally get our first game of 2014 at the Thunderdome and great that it ended up in a win. We had a very slow start but once we got ourselves organized I think we did some really good things on offence. Jylisa Williams’ first CIS game was a tremendous success. 39 pts, 6 rebs & 5 steals isn’t too shabby a start to her time as a Thunderwolf, and the Thunderdome fans were treated to something special tonight. Bardsley came off the bench to hit 5-8 from 3pt land and helped spread the floor for Jylisa while Andrea and Inkila had very effective minutes off the bench with 8 and 7 points respectively. We need to get much better defensively tomorrow but it was a good start to 2014.”

The two teams rematch Saturday evening at 6pm in the Thunderdome.

Webcast available via SSN Canada.

Audio broadcast available via LU Radio, 102.7FM.